Skepticism

EVENTS

We Hunted the Megalodon

Since David Futrelle is currently offline, dealing with some nasty migraines, I guess I have to step in and cover the incel beat. Incels, for those blessedly ignorant of them, are “involuntary celibates”, sad deprived people who can’t get a woman to touch their penises, and who then blame all of womankind for their selfish unwillingness to have sex with them. They also tend to aggregate in places like r/incel where they indulge in increasingly vicious rounds of reinforcement of inappropriate blaming. It gets ugly.

OK, forget the bad biology — that’s irrelevant in the context of this person’s contemptible beliefs about women.

Without their shit tier brains they would be nearly perfect beings, which could be used by men for the better of society.

Yeah, ladies, if you were smarter men could use you, so we’re going to pith you so men can use your bodies. It’s all about using you.

Hey, I’m sort of understanding how Futrelle could feel bad after concentrated doses of reading this crap, but my discomfort seems lower down, somewhere in some heaving guts.

How do we end this bullshit? I think it’s safe to say that reddit makes it worse by allowing these people to clump into self-reinforcing clans suffering from self-fulfilling prophecies. Maybe reddit should take some responsibility and shut down wildly demented hate groups? Nah. Free speech uber alles!

Put my bitch Thorn’s brain in my body – well no, the incel would want a younger fitter body, but anyway – and she’d run away from him or if forced into proximity bite him. She is far pickier than me. And if he thinks dogs don’t nag he knows less about them than he does about women. Thorn will, for instance. demand to be cuddled and stand in front of you one paw on your foot until she has had enough love, as she’s a German Shepherd this is pretty effective at stopping you moving. She will shift if told to, but I rarely bother, why wouldn’t you want to cuddle a large intelligent ball of fluff that is extremely picky and considers you one of a handful of humans worth interacting with?

We can’t “end” the bullshit. If we want to enjoy the increased communication that the Internet gives us righteous folk then we must endure that jerks also find each other and talk. Finding a good way to select what can and cannot be said is hard. Until there’s a really good solution, the bullshit will continue. The resulting task is containment.
Decades ago on Usenet one of the Macintosh discussion groups was specifically intended to attract the ideological Mac-haters, clearing the trash out of the support and development groups. Windows weenies whining about whatever is a trifle compared to this crap, but perhaps these Reddit snakepits serve a similar function: voluntary fenced-off freeze-peach areas keep most of the jerks out of wider exposure.
Phlo, while they’re both nauseating, the misogyny harms others.

Counterpoint: Elliot Rodger spent a lot of time on these sites having his anger and resentment fed, and many of them view him as a hero. There isn’t as much evidence for George Sodini visiting sites like this, but he aired his own grievances against women online.

This stuff can’t be contained because the internet isn’t some sort of alternate universe that doesn’t affect the real world. Quite often it has a very deadly effect on the real world.

No need for risky and questionable brain transplants or ethical questions about keeping a kennel of labotomized humans. Just buy a non-animate partner. Get rid of the bitterness without bothering uppity be-brained women.

Point taken, Tabby. The mechanism is clear, but the solution is difficult. The Internet is not alone; Jim David Adkisson watched a lot of Fox News and read books by those blowhards. People who want such motivation will find it.
The question remains: what do we do? Do we take the Quaker approach and only use appropriate technology? Who decides?

Is it just me who thinks that “The Incels” sounds like a race of Doctor Who baddies, and that a scheme to do brain swaps between humans and dogs is exactly the sort of thing you would find in a Doctor Who plot?

I do think that forums like this reddit one are a big part of the problem though. Lots of people can’t find sexual or romantic contact. Possibly even the majority of people. But for most of us it’s really no big deal. A bit of a disappointment, perhaps, but nothing to write home about. Somewhat akin to not having won the National Lottery or chanced across an abandoned chest of gold. It takes a peculiar environment indeed to turn an everyday minor disappointment like that into a raging case of self-entitled misogynistic Dr. Moreau fantasy.

I’ve been “involuntarily celibate” for a decade or so. I’m wondering what exactly it would take for me to contemplate giving gay men brain swaps with cats to create peculiar companions. So far I’m coming up blank.

So men are capable of love, humanity and kindness, but he wants to lock a human being in a kennel after lobomotizing said human being and turning her into his sex slave? Yeah, that’s consistent. I wouldn’t even know how to talk to a person like this (and what would be the point I suppose).

I think that the solution is right there in the problem.
the problem is a complete inability to interact with human beings on a personal level, in this case it is the inability of some male humans inability to interact with female humans on a personal level. Sometimes it is an inability to interact with humans from a different country or a different cultural background or race.
I do not think that the problem can really be solved through any other process than by a personal one. One on one interaction with individuals as individuals, as human beings. The conflict is an interior conflict first, between the desire as a social animal to be engaged with others and an inability to do so in a healthy way.
There is no quick fix no general procedure or policy that does not address the underling problem that is going to change that and can not be seen as just a reflection as in a fun house mirror of the same problem.
uncle frogy

I just love how they don’t expect women to take in their evil views and “good guy” acts when they evaluate whether or not to engage in a sex act with them.

Wastecans, nobody wants to bang someone that dehumanizes them, nor should they. I will continue to push for the enforcement of the law to cover immoral beings who wish death, suffering, rape, abuse and a myriad of depraved acts onto others just because they want to get their tips wet + lack base human decency and respect.

I suspect most “incels” are like this. They get angry at women for having standards of attraction, but they also hate women they deem “ugly” and want nothing to do with them.

That’s exactly right; it has been pointed out many times that these people are not really “involuntarily” celibate: they are celibate because they have unrealistic and unreasonable standards of beauty and behavior for any potential partners. Also, because they’re shitty people and deny the need for any kind of introspection. Seriously, some of them are even perfectly handsome fellows that have convinced themselves that they are physically ugly instead of maybe considering that their nasty personality is what makes them repellent.

Reading the opening salvo of that rather inane rant, I get the feeling this person has never witnessed Canine sexual politics in action, just because a dog is loyal, doesn’t mean they are gonna give it up to just anyone. I believe this is the sort of statement that Matt Dillahunty would call fractally wrong.

I squinted too hard at that image.
i dunno why this guy just doesn’t have sex with dogs though it sounds like the only thing stopping him is social mores and he has a pretty loose grasp on those anyway

@Tabby Lavalamp #8:
I have been there and I think you are right.
Conventionally ugly men expect to find conventionally attractive women.
The media keep shoving in our heads that this is how it works.
A culture that nurtures toxic masculine ego does the rest.

These slimebags aren’t satisfied with masturbation or real dolls because they get off on the idea of using their penises to dehumanize and debase actual, living women. And not as some kind of fetish roleplay involving consent and boundaries. They hate the idea of consent because it implies partners are equal.

Sex workers and women into casual sex have no draw for them, either, because incels buy into superstitions about sexual purity and innocence. In their mind, women who have had a lot of sex are already debased and inhuman, so there’s nothing to take away from them. That—and not just fear of comparison—is why so many of them want virgins or women with very little sexual experience.

Hey, dudes! I’m an “incel.” I have a lot of trouble convincing a woman to look at me, much less give me a nanosecond of their time, i’d love to have some to love, or even just fuck on a casual basis, but I don’t. I’d give both my kidneys for an attractive woman (by my standards) who’d love a fat, old, ugly, impoverished, mentally ill, loser like me. I haven’t had anything approaching sex in nearly 20 years! And I’ll be 43 in November. I’m lonely and it hurts to be alone, especially after you find out how great being in a relationship with someone you think loves you can be.

You know what, my incel dude-bros? As lonely, hurt, and horny as you are, NO ONE OWES YOU ACCESS TO THEIR BODIES!! Not a woman, nor a man if you are so inclined. You have to convince people, of their own free wil, to,fuck,you. If you can’t do that, then maybe, just maybe, you ought to consider that the problem isn’t the result of some vast conspiracy of frigid, man-hating feminists out to deprive men sex, but with you; your behavior, your attitude, your appearance, etc..

Is it just me who thinks that “The Incels” sounds like a race of Doctor Who baddies, and that a scheme to do brain swaps between humans and dogs is exactly the sort of thing you would find in a Doctor Who plot?

That was largely my thought as well, very probably assisted by not being too sure what “incel” meant (albeit Generalissimo Google suggests I guessed correctly (and I now notice poopyhead did define the term in the OP — my reding skilz hasn’t good gust nowt…)).

In terms of helping these people (the real ones, not the Doctor Who fantasy), my first thoughts turn to “How did they become this way?”, which then leads to “What should be done / not done to try and prevent…” — which presupposes a verifiable understanding of the problems. That is, deal with the causes in addition to the symptoms and results (some results apparently including the echo chambers highlighted in the OP).